The next morning I went to the repository early and looked for Marc. He was on Stack 6. I looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “Well?” I whispered. “What are we going to do about the kuduo?”
“It’s done,” he said. “I just got back from Stone’s.”
“You did it? You stole the kuduo? You were supposed to wait for me!”
“It’s not stealing.”
I decided not to argue the point. “Did you at least empty out the deposits before you took it?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure out how to get them out, or what to do with them if I did.”
Oh, no! Good-bye to my sense of direction! I wondered whether Mr. Stone would be able to take it out of the kuduo and use it. Good luck to him if he did—it was never much good even when I had it. Good-bye to Aaron’s firstborn and everything else. Not for the first time, I thought Marc was pretty selfish. “Did you at least find out where Anjali is?” I asked. “The Snow White mirror said she’s a puppet.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
I told him about the conversation with Aaron and the mirror.
“So the spell worked on Anjali! A puppet! At least now we know what to look for when we go rescue her,” said Marc.
“So you found out where?”
He nodded. “Stone gave me a name and address. A woman named Gloria Badwin, in the West Village. I’m going there today, as soon as my shift is over—I just have to wait for Mrs. Walker to drop off Andre here.”
“Who’s Mrs. Walker?” I asked.
“Andre’s friend’s mom. She’s dropping him off here after his playdate, when my shift is over. I’ll have to get someone to watch him while I go look for Anjali.”
“That’s not the only problem. Before we rescue Anjali, we’ll need to find the Golden Key, whatever that is.”
“The Golden Key? Why?”
I told him what the mirror had said.
“Well, that’s easy enough. I’ll go get the key right now.”
“You know where it is? You know what it is?”
“Yeah, it’s one of the objects in the Grimm Collection. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
I sat down and opened the book I was reading for English. I heard him come in, but I didn’t look up. “Did you find it?” I asked.
“Find what?” said Aaron.
My heart tripped over its ankles. “Oh! Sorry, I thought you were Marc.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Aaron scowled at me. I tried to think of something better to say. “How’s your . . .” His what? His evil mirror? His hastily made bed? “How’s your mom?”
He blushed. “She’s fine. Look, what are we going to do about Anjali? Have you figured out what this Golden Key is?”
“Something from the Grimm Collection, Marc said. He went to get it.”
“You told him?”
“Of course I told him! He’s Anjali’s boyfriend. He has a right to know.”
“He’s also the guy who’s been stealing things from the Grimm Collection, remember?”
Marc walked in before I could answer. “I forgot—you need two keys to get into the GC now. Can I take yours?” Marc asked me.
I reached in my pocket.
“You’re not going to give it to him!” said Aaron. “Doc told you never to lend it to anyone!”
“Anjali got kidnapped! I need to rescue her!” said Marc.
“Why are you trying to stop me?”
“I’m not—,” Aaron began.
I grabbed his arm. “Shh, here comes Ms. Minnian.”
Ms. Minnian hurried over to us, her heels clicking on the linoleum. “Have any of you seen Dr. Rust? Or Anjali?” she asked. She sounded very worried.
We all shook our heads. “No—why?” said Marc.
“Nobody’s seen Dr. Rust since yesterday, and Anjali didn’t show up for her shift. If you hear from either of them, can you come and tell me or Ms. Callender immediately, please?”
“Of course,” I said. “Wow, I hope they’re okay!”
“I hope so too. Until we find Dr. Rust, we’re putting the Grimm Collection completely out of bounds. We’ve changed all the locks—your keys won’t work. If you get a *GC slip, send it straight to me.” She walked off quickly.
I waited until I couldn’t hear her heels anymore, then said, “I guess that means we can’t ask Doc for help. But we could still ask Ms. Minnian or Ms. Callender.”
“No!” said Marc. “This is just more proof that we can’t trust anyone.”
“I can certainly agree with that,” said Aaron. He glared at Marc to show exactly who he meant by “anyone.”
“Do you think Wallace Stone stole Dr. Rust too somehow?” I asked. “We should have warned Doc about Stone—Doc trusted him! Or is Doc looking for the kuduo?”
“What do you mean? What happened to the kuduo?” asked Aaron.
Now it was Marc’s turn to glare at me.
“Answer me,” said Aaron. “Where’s the kuduo?”
After a moment, I answered. “Marc took it. He traded it to Wallace Stone for the address of the person who has Anjali.”
“He what? He stole the kuduo? With my firstborn child in it? And you knew about it and you let him? I can’t believe you!” He stared at me for a moment, then spun on his heel and started to walk off.
“Wait! Aaron!” I grabbed his arm again. “Where are you going?”
“To tell Ms. Minnian and then the police. Let go!” He shook his arm.
Marc stepped between him and the door. “You can’t do that. You know you can’t. We’ve got to rescue Anjali—Stone gave me the address and the mirror told you about the Golden Key. Think about it! If we tell the librarians, they won’t let us near it and we’ll never get Anjali back!”
“They’ll get her back themselves.”
“You think you can trust them? Maybe Doc’s in on it. Maybe they’re all in on it!” said Marc.
“Or maybe nobody’s in on it except you. You just admitted you stole the kuduo! Get out of my way!”
“You think I would let my own girlfriend get kidnapped if I was in on it? Just calm down and think for a minute, Aaron! The point is, we know what to do, but if we tell the librarians, they won’t let us do it.”
“Aaron, he’s right,” I said. “You know he is. We have to rescue Anjali! Can we please just stop fighting and figure out how?”
Aaron glared at me some more, but he stopped trying to get to the door. “All right,” he said. “We’ll rescue Anjali. But the moment she’s safe, I’m turning Marc in.”
“Fine,” said Marc. “I don’t care what happens to me if Anjali’s safe. Let’s go get the Golden Key and rescue her.”
“Yeah, but how?” I said. “It’s in the Grimm Collection and they changed the locks. Our keys won’t work. Is there any other way into the Grimm Collection besides the door?”
Both boys looked stumped.
“Not unless you crawled in through the pneum pipes,” said Marc.
“Hey,” said Aaron. “That’s a thought.”
“Yeah, right,” said Marc. “You may be short, but you’re not that short.”
Aaron gave him a withering look. “We can use the shrink ray in the Wells Bequest. Ms. Minnian didn’t say anything about the other Special Collections, just the Grimm Collection—I bet my Wells key still works. I can shrink you down and send you into the Grimm Collection in a pneum.”
“There’s actually a shrink ray? That’s brilliant!” I said.
Marc nodded grudgingly. “I guess that could work,” he said.
I thought about it some more. “Okay, so that’s how we get into the Grimm Collection, but how do we get out? We would need somebody full size to send us back through the pipes.”
“Maybe we can use this Golden Key to get out. Any idea what it does?” said Marc.
“It opens a box. Nobody knows what’s in the box,” said Aaron.
“Then how do you know it opens it?” asked Marc.
“Didn’t you read the Grimm fairy tales? It’s the last one.”
“Right, the last story! Of course!” I said.
“Oh. I guess I must have skipped that one. Is it really boring, with lots of oafs and donkeys? I kind of skimmed those.”
“No, it’s really short. A boy finds a golden key in the woods. Then he digs around and finds an iron box. He unlocks it, but the story ends there, and you never find out what’s in the box.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to help us get out,” said Marc.
“Maybe the Golden Key unlocks more than just that one box,” I said. “Maybe once we’re inside the Grimm Collection, we can use something else to let us out. A genie or a wishing ring or something. Or we could put on the invisibility cloak and sneak out when a librarian comes in. I think we should use the shrink ray. I bet we can find a way out of the GC if we manage to get in.”
“All right,” said Aaron, picking up his backpack. “Let’s go.”
The shrink ray, a huge machine with streamlined curves, crouched like a gigantic rat in its own section of the Wells Bequest. Aaron picked up its long, curly tail and examined the plug at the end. “Where did I put that extension cord?”
I stared at the machine with rising apprehension as Aaron and Marc argued about who would shrink whom. The argument didn’t last long. Wells objects were really Aaron’s domain, as he pointed out. He was the only one who knew how to operate it.
“First we’ll send some useful stuff down to the GC in pneums, things like scissors and string,” said Aaron. “Then I’ll shrink the two of you so you fit in the pneums yourselves and send you down. Who wants to go first?”
“I’d better,” said Marc. “I’m stronger, so I can help Elizabeth get out of the tube.”
We packed a couple of pneums with supplies and stuffed a few more things in our backpacks. Aaron pushed a switch and the machine growled to life. He swung it around to point its nozzle at Marc.
“Hey! Aren’t you going to test it first?”
“If you want. What should I shrink?”
I handed him my sweater. It was a hand-me-down from Veronica, and it was too big. In fact, I had thought about trying to shrink it by putting it through the dryer.
Aaron pointed the shrink ray and fiddled with a knob. A green ray came whooshing out. The sweater writhed like a balloon losing air. In seconds it was down to half its size.
Aaron twisted another knob and the shrinking slowed down. So did the writhing—the sweater waved its arms slowly like something in an underwater documentary, kelp or a sea anemone.
I picked it up. It looked like it would fit a Barbie doll. I was amazed at how finely made it seemed, with its perfect little buttons and blindingly tiny stitches.
“Test the magnifying function—make sure you can get it back to the right size,” I said.
Aaron fiddled with the controls and turned the shrink ray on again. This time the light was red. The sweater puffed out, wrinkling into little hills. It looked like lava erupting undersea.
“Okay, stop,” I said.
“But it’s not done yet,” objected Aaron.
“Now! Stop!” I leaned over and flicked the switch to off. The light died down.
“Why did you do that? It’s only at 94 percent,” said Aaron.
“It was too big to begin with,” I said, putting on the sweater. It was still a little loose, but not nearly as bad as before. Maybe I would grow into it.
“Ready, Marc?” said Aaron, switching on the shrink ray.
The green light shot out, but Marc didn’t seem to be shrinking. “Is it working?” I asked.
Marc shrugged.
“Give it a minute,” said Aaron.
We gave it a minute. Nothing happened. Aaron fiddled with some knobs. Still nothing happened.
“I know!” I said. “It’s Jaya’s knot—it protects you, remember? I had to take mine off before Doc could remove my sense of direction.”
“Oh, right,” said Marc, tugging at the knot with his teeth.
“Not that way,” I said. “You’ll break your teeth. You have to tell it come off. In rhyme,” I added.
“Okay, knot, so here’s the gist: get your booty off my wrist,” Marc told it, rapping like a hip-hop star. The knot came off.
Aaron started the machine again. “Is it working now?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Marc. “I feel funny.” He sounded funny too.
“Look, it’s definitely working,” I said. Marc had reached my height and was subsiding slowly, twitching. “Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah . . . it’s weird. It kind of tickles inside my bones, where I can’t scratch.”
“Enough?” I said. Marc was now the height of a soda can.
“Let’s check,” said Aaron. He switched off the shrink ray and put a pneum down next to Marc. “Can you fit in there?”
Marc slid the door open and tried to wedge himself in. “Too tight,” he said. His voice sounded tiny and higher than usual. He was like a doll of himself, with perfect little limbs and itty-bitty shoes. He stepped out of the pneum and stretched gracefully, like a tiny tiger. I wished I could take him home with me and keep him.
Aaron turned the ray on Marc again for a few seconds. “Better?”
Marc tried the pneum again; this time he fit. “Perfect.” He climbed back out.
Then it was my turn. I talked the knot off my ankle and went over to the shrinking spot. “Do your worst,” I said.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then I felt the itching Marc had described. All at once the world looked as if I’d shaken free of it and was falling down, down, down through exploding space.
The world was so big that I couldn’t get my bearings. What were all those looming shapes? Which way was the door? Where was Marc? Was that perilously swaying skyscraper Aaron? How would I negotiate all this with no sense of direction?
The green light snapped off and the insane sensation subsided.
“Elizabeth? Are you okay?”
Aaron’s voice sounded strange. I could pick out the individual vibrations. It took me a moment to put them together into words.
“Fine, I guess . . . I’m fine.”
“You sure? You look a little . . .” A huge hand came swooping toward me from overhead.
I ducked frantically. “Hey! What are you doing?”
“Sorry. You’re just so tiny and delicate . . . I wanted to make sure . . . Here, do you fit in this, or should I make you smaller?”
A pneum barreled through the air and stopped beside me. Aaron’s hand held it steady as I slid the door open. It looked crudely made and worn. The plastic was scored with deep scratches, and the felt was battered. Could it possibly protect me as it went banging through the pipes?
Wedging myself in, I pulled the door shut around me, then slid it open again without trouble and eased my head and shoulders out.
“Aaron? I’m going to close this thing. Can you lay it down with the door facedown, just to make sure I can get out?”
“Sure.”
His vast hand! Ugh, with a hangnail on his index finger. He tipped me over with a dizzying lurch, like a Ferris wheel before it really gets started. It wasn’t easy getting the door open—I had to throw my weight back and forth to rock the pneum onto its back—but I managed it and climbed out.
“Time for the pipes?” Aaron said.
I nodded.
“Okay, get in your pneums. I’ll have to take you up to the MER. There’s no direct pipe to the Grimm Collection from here.” He brought his face close to us. “Buckle up,” he said.
We traveled to the MER in Aaron’s pocket, swaying and bumping with each step. “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Marc.
“Please don’t,” I said.
Sarah was on pipe duty in the Main Exam Room.
“Mind if I just get in there for a sec, Sarah? I need to send something downstairs,” said Aaron.
“Sure,” she said. “Actually, while you’re here, could you watch the pipes for me while I run to the ladies’?”
“Of course,” said Aaron. We heard Sarah walk away.
“Send me first, and give me five minutes to get out of the way before you send Elizabeth,” said Marc.
I heard the hiss as Aaron opened the pipe and sent the two pneums of supplies down. Another hiss and a thump as he sent Marc down. Then a long pause—five minutes is forever when you’re in a plastic tube in somebody’s pocket, waiting to go crashing through space.
At last, Aaron’s hand appeared again and pulled me out of his pocket.
The blood rushed to my head. “I’m upside down!” I yelled.
Aaron lifted me to eye level again, holding me so I was lying on my back, and whispered, “I know. You have to start out upside down or you’ll land on your head. The pipes go up before they go down.”
“Oh, great,” I moaned.
“Sorry,” said Aaron. “It’s not my fault, it’s geometry.” He turned me upside down again and pulled the pipe door open. “Well, bye, Elizabeth. Travel safely,” he said, and let go.